


In With the Old: One Year On

by istia



Series: In With the Old [2]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV First Person, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-06
Updated: 2008-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:11:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Time-Stamp meme to a request for a follow-up scene a year after the end of <em>In With the Old</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In With the Old: One Year On

A practised glare made wet-behind-the-ears Finchley hesitate just long enough for me to nip past him and slide into the last of the untaken and tolerably comfortable, though battered, easy chairs. A couple of years' experience made all the difference in negotiating the CI5 rest room after a successful op, especially one involving a lot of frenetic action and no major injuries, at least to us. Cowley was in one of the interview rooms, conducting briefings, so people rotated in and out as they finished reports or took a break to grab mugs of tea.

The current crop of infants was milling about looking anywhere from grim to exuberant; what set them apart wasn't how they looked, but that they had any particular expression at all. This op, despite a few hectic moments that'd caused collective adrenaline spikes, hadn't amounted to much in the CI5 scheme of things. Set-up; wait around for the order to go in; exchange of fire; dodge a few nicked grenades flung about with more enthusiasm than accuracy; smash in the various doors and windows of the farmhouse under siege; and corral the miscreants, which had involved slapping a few idiots who didn't know how to count the odds. Round up a couple of strays and it was another op in the bag for CI5 and another chance to thumb our noses at MI6, whose personnel arrived too late to do anything but stand around looking constipated. More or less their usual look, which had no doubt contributed to the Cow's bland good humour as he'd handed off the mop-up duties to Sally and bustled away.

A mug was thrust in front of my eyes. I recoiled from the garish, 3-D purple daisy excreting from its ceramic side, but closed my hand on the warmth and inhaled the fragrant steam as I looked up...and up the long lean length of Pete Haskell, recent transfer from the SAS. Twinkling dark eyes looked down at me with warmth to rival the heat spreading through my palm. I was surprised into a smile, an effect the bastard too often had on me. Rakish, amused, but charming with it.... What was it about SAS secondments? Did they fucking grow them like that, right down to the long-lashed dark eyes and fuckable mouths?

His fingers were still around the mug, under mine. I froze as I realised it, then deliberately shifted my grip to the handle, curling my fingers tighter than needed in chaste aloneness. I didn't look up as he removed his hand; but, then, I didn't need to see to know the hint of disappointment and resignation he'd be veiling with a sweep of his lashes. He was subtle as any of us with his signals; but not so subtle as to be obtuse.

"Get that inside yourself." Haskell's West Country vowels dripped smooth as honey over me as he straightened. "You look like you're rooted to the chair, mate."

"Yeah, ta." I sipped the hot tea, errant corner of my brain noting the right amount of sweetness--my preferred one-and-a-half teaspoons of sugar--and the dash, rather than dollop, of milk.

I refused to look up again even as he settled his arse on the wide arm of the chair, though I also managed not to shift my arm away as warmth bled through the denim of his jeans and the cotton of my shirt where they touched. Haskell was a good mate and shaping up to be a tip-top agent. We'd been teamed a few times, including today, as Haskell's training wheels came off and Cowley tried him out in various combinations. Only Cowley knew if Cowley was considering teaming us permanently; we worked brilliantly together, but we hadn't quick clicked the way the really tight partnerships did.

We hadn't clicked because I wasn't letting it happen. Haskell patently wanted it, on the job--and off. The job, yeah, I was for it; but not the other. Not my thing any more; I'd stuck to birds for the last year. The beauty of it was I didn't even need to make much effort about it. The CI5 girls provided an intriguingly expansive pool of opportunities, not only via new recruits joining the ranks, but also through contacts with sisters and cousins and girlfriends and girlfriends' friends and girlfriends' friends' sisters.... Even cycling through them at a good clip, a bloke probably wouldn't reach Land's End before he was too long in the tooth to give a shite.

And I didn't, about birds. But I'd had the best of the other kind, in Bodie--brief and fleeting in reality, but not in fancy. It wasn't that I'd been waiting for him to turn to me all these months so much as simply being ready if he did. Being ready meant no encumbrance that couldn't be quickly disposed of; the girls were just out for a few weeks of fun, and knew it going in. Somebody like Haskell...would be far more complicated.

Anyway, I'd had the best. Anybody else would fall short in comparison. Girls were uniquely themselves, no ideal to live up to, each fine and appealing in her own way, the differences and variety a good deal of the draw. Men for me nowadays were all ruthlessly put in a bleeding line-up, and not a one with any chance of measuring up. His skin wouldn't be as smooth, or as pale; or his cock wouldn't have that little crook to the left; or his lashes wouldn't brush my cheek when he kissed along my jaw....

Of course, he also wouldn't be thinking of Doyle when I was fucking him. I snorted into my tea, taking the chance to move my arm away from Haskell while it would look like a natural movement; only that just made him shift over a bit, firm and sure, so we were back to where we started from. I gave up and returned to my brooding.

I'd been waiting and watching all these months; all twelve months. To the day, as it happened. Heigh-ho, Happy Anniversary to me: Of the day Bodie walked out of my life and back into Doyle's fucking clutches. I'd been watching, waiting; expecting it to fall apart, for Doyle to throw a spanner into it, the way he'd always done, the bastard, mucking with Bodie the way Bodie'd let nobody else get away with. Doyle mucking with him and never likely, either, to be there when Bodie needed him had been the status quo, far as I'd ever seen.

Case in point, Bodie's dust-up with some bikers ten months back, give or take a fortnight. I'd sniffed around, found out enough to piece together that Bodie'd been in a bad place, and Doyle had left him hanging there alone for days, only rushing in at the end, too bloody late. Word was, Cowley'd put a gun to Bodie's head; that was how far gone Bodie'd been. Afterwards, there'd been a lot of quiet talk behind doors--Dr Ross's, the Cow's--and a lot of Doyle yelling not behind doors and hovering and laying down the law.

Poor bastard. Nobody in Bodie's corner when he'd needed it, bloody predictable, just all there to shove him about when it was over.

I'd put the metaphorical candle in the window, got shut of my current bird; waited. Bodie didn't come to me, though. I shouldn't have expected it, not with Doyle crowding round him, a pushy, scowling ball of exasperation and stubbornness absorbing all of Bodie's attention like a black hole, but hope is like cockroaches, bleeding near impossible to kill.

Shortly after Bodie'd got himself back on an even keel, Doyle'd met a bird and rumour was it was serious. I saw her once, briefly: Porcelain skin and smooth red hair, rushing down a corridor in the heart of HQ with pain bleeding from her eyes. I hung back, watching as Turner dived out of the office we were sharing, went to stop her, find out who she was and how the fuck she'd got in, but Doyle appeared in frantic chase. Turner backed off and I kept well out of it, as all sensible people did when in the path of whirlwind Doyle. Anyway, I can put two and two together quick as the next bugger, and I wasn't going to help put any kind of obstacle in the way of Doyle's fixing whatever was off with his girlfriend. Turner shut the door of the office and I ignored the half-finished report in the typewriter in favour of spying on the car park from the window.

I knew Doyle held an odd magnetic appeal for women. An astounding percentage of the girls in the typing pool, and their sisters and cousins and best friends' friends' sisters' cousins, all attested to it. None of them managed to explain it other than swoonish comments about him being "sex in denim and red Kickers", but there it was. A tenet of inter-sexual relations held that women saw Ray Doyle's street-monkey mug through the rosiest glasses ever invented. I assumed even elegant redheads weren't immune, so I watched for a make-up scene, gripping the window sill as Doyle emerged from the building in her wake. He grabbed her, held her, talked...but instead of melting against him and arms tangling round each other, it was a shake of her head and a decisive turning of her back and getting into her car. And driving away, leaving him stranded and alone. Goddammit.

Which I wouldn't have considered the end of the matter, my mind already planning Doyle's next steps for him, except that Bodie emerged from the building. Bodie, who was supposed to be with Cowley in the interview room, but had apparently blown him off just as Doyle must have. Blew off Cowley just so he could put an arm around Doyle and be shoved away. I flinched in sympathy, willing Bodie to give Doyle _his_ back, walk the fuck away--

But it ended with me turning my back, trying to blank out the image of Bodie stoically holding his ground, waiting on fucking Doyle the way Bodie always did, and Doyle stopping, Bodie going to him again, the way Bodie _always_ fucking did. Doyle's arm sliding around him and the two of them disappearing around the corner, walking step-in-step like their hips were screwed together, Frankenstein's twins. Probably heading for the pub and a stiff drink with Doyle intent on his misery and Bodie intent on Doyle, as per fucking usual, ditching all the rest of us with Cowley yelling down the corridor, irate voice echoing off the high ceiling. I abandoned my report and went to take up the slack for them, since Cowley had inconveniently remembered I was nearby and it was my name he was bellowing.

Snuffed that candle of hope, but it flared again during an undercover op shortly afterwards that had Doyle cosily shacked up with a Chinese sergeant with glossy hair and a brain to match her looks. Doyle had a weakness for intelligence. Bodie looked morose throughout, and I made sure I crossed his path a few times, just a timely reminder of my existence...just in case; but she disappeared back to Hong Kong after the op.

Then it was Bodie in a shouting match of Titans with Cowley about Doyle's being in danger when another undercover op went pear-shaped. Not just rumour, that time; I'd arrived in time to hear it myself, pausing outside the cell Van Neikerk had escaped from. Over the squalid sprawl of a dead toddler on the floor, Bodie'd spilt vicious words and fury with a burn like the equatorial sun compared to the match-flare of warmth he'd had for me.

Pathetic, yeah, to still value that match-flare. But Doyle continually played fast-and-loose with the sun and Bodie was the one who always got burnt. And that still hurt, stupid as it was. It hurt, knowing how fucking much better off Bodie could be if he'd only finally see Doyle with clear eyes.

The door of the rest room banged open and tension rippled across the room through men still keyed up with the last dregs of adrenaline. It was only Doyle, though, shedding filthy water droplets and muttered curses as he stalked to the middle of the room. A space cleared around him as people shuffled away and the tension fizzled; I felt Haskell, still perched on my chair arm, settle back into relaxed semi-torpor.

"Oi, Ratty."

Doyle turned with a glare just in time to be hit in the face with a garish, CI5-issue towel. His next curse was muffled as he rubbed the towel over his face, then swathed it round his head and attacked his dripping curls with vigour. Everyone seated in his nearest vicinity leaned back in their chairs, instinctive if futile attempt to duck the fall-out. There always seemed to be fall-out when Doyle was around, of one sort or another. This time, it came with odeur de swamp.

"Laugh it up, Bodie. It could've been you, you know, if you'd been on the job instead of hanging back tying your shoelaces. That squirmy little bastard was supposed to be your collar."

"Not a chance." Bodie slid smoothly past his partner and his flailing elbows, going to the tea counter. "I'm far too graceful and agile to do a swandive into a duck pond."

Pennington, with his round, schoolboyish face screwed up in a frown and his Etonish voice petulant with disapproval, did what he was best at and stated the obvious: "You're dripping all over the floor."

I felt a faint quiver in Haskell through our contact and snorted softly myself as Doyle's face emerged from the towel and swivelled to stare at Pennington. His green eyes bug-wide, Doyle spoke in a breathless voice of wonder: "No? Honour bright?"

He swung his head precipitously around, causing another general flinch back. "Bodie, did you know I'm drippin' on the floor? 'ow the 'ell, I ask you, could this be?"

Doyle always seemed to find it amusing to exaggerate his accent when one of the Oxbridge crew punted into his vicinity.

"Dunno, mate, complete mystery to me." Bodie turned from the counter with two mugs in hand and handed one off to Doyle. Bodie sipped at his tea as he did a slow, far-from-casual once-over of Doyle from squelching boots up wet jeans even more provocative to the imagination than usual to the curls plastered to Doyle's forehead. Bodie's eyes were bright in a nest of crinkled lines as they finally met Doyle's.

I jerked my own eyes away, fingers tightening on my mug before I lifted it to take a savage swallow. Bodie's voice washed over my head, warmer than any pillow talk he'd offered me.

"I reckon he must have eyes like a bat, you know. Sees clearer than the rest of us."

"Hmm, that might be. Wasn't it 'awks, though? 'awks 'ave eyes." Doyle spoke like he was reciting from memory; a private joke, judging from the underlying laughter in his voice.

Bodie's voice, crystal to Doyle's glass shards, matched his tone for tone: "Ah, right. Hawks it is. I must've been thinking of his ears."

And there it was, the two of them allied against outsiders as always; as fucking always happened, even at the slightest, most inane provocation. My gut clenched at this bleeding familiar sign of how inextricable they were, walled in together by choice. By Bodie's choice, gallingly, and Bodie himself ever chinking cracks or gaps that appeared, from the minute to the lorry-sized, to make sure they stayed snug in their two-man fortress.

I raised my eyes to Bodie and found him standing closer to Doyle than anyone else ever got. Doyle's pugnacious face, its off-kilter lines framed unflatteringly by the orange towel draped over his head, was relaxed, laughing eyes meshed with Bodie's. Bodie's expression was more controlled, amusement hinted at in the quirked corners of his mouth; the tiny dimple on Bodie's left upper lip, barely noticeable unless you knew him well, was deeper than usual.

Pennington, who had probably become inured to jokes about his bat ears in the nursery, continued on like the fair-haired battering ram he so successfully was in the field: "You might at least do us the favour of taking a shower."

Doyle broke his fixed gaze with Bodie to rain astonishment on Pennington again. "A _shower_." He turned back to Bodie, brows lifting. "Now, why didn't I think of that?"

Bodie took another sip of his tea before saying, casually, "Might have something to do with its being occupied."

Doyle snapped his fingers. "Knew I was missing something!" He swept his gaze across the entire room this time. "'oo's in the shower?"

A few disinterested shrugs before Finchley ventured, "Anson?"

A glance round showed Anson--amongst others--was indeed missing. It seemed enough for Doyle, who shouted, "Anson! If you use all the hot water, I'm gonna shred all your cigars!"

I felt a slight vibration from Haskell again, and felt oddly betrayed. Laughing _at_ Doyle was one thing. Anything else....

A well of silence in the centre of the room--the place where Doyle planted himself always seemed to become the centre, somehow, whether it was the corner of a building, a distant field, the entire fucking _city_\--and I looked up again, helpless to resist the draw to see, to know. Bodie was brushing away a bit of muck from the corner of Doyle's eye with his little finger. Doyle, who suffered people touching him with the equanimity of a raptor, had gone still to match his quietness, docile as a handtamed canary. Bodie was efficient but delicate as he ensured none of the crap would bleed into Doyle's eye. It was over in a moment, a mere flick of movement, Bodie's callused finger sliding with the surety of a figure skater over the thin skin next to Doyle's eye; and over the lump of Doyle's misshapen cheekbone, where I'd lay odds even girlfriends rarely, if ever, touched him. A perfectly chaste touch in a crowded room: Except it was Bodie, and it was Doyle, and nothing they did was less than intimate.

My skin prickled with the memory of Bodie's touch, faint and distant now; more imagination than real memory. A year since he'd touched me--that last night, when he'd come to my flat and packed his few belongings and left without giving me a last touch. Not even a flick of a finger for me to squirrel away in memory; not a shred of sensuality although we were alone in the place we'd been sharing for three fucking months.

But even if he'd touched me, it wouldn't have carried a drop of the warmth Bodie drenched Doyle with even in the middle of a crowded room with a matey brush of his finger.

I couldn't even conceive of the heat they must generate when they were alone. Even when my cock was throbbing inside Bodie, it must've been like a day on Bridlington beach compared to paddling up the steamy Amazon. Everything I thought I'd had, or could make with Bodie if I just had a fucking chance--

Doyle's voice snapped me back to the present. "Thanks, mate."

Resignation was a chill lump in my chest as I watched Bodie wipe his finger ostentatiously on Doyle's towel, grinning at the glower he won.

The warmest thing in my life was Haskell's firm thigh pressed against my arm. And just maybe, at that moment, it was that steady presence that helped me finally crush the carapace of hope once and for all.

Doyle lifted his hand towards his face, but paused at seeing the filth streaked on it. His mobile face twisted into a grimace.

"Sod it." He shoved his mug into Bodie's free hand. "I'm going to nip into Cowley's shower; he should be occupied downstairs for at least the next half-hour." He strode towards the door with squelching steps.

"Don't leave any footprints behind," Bodie called after him, and turned back into the room with a secretive smile.

I stood up. Bodie's eyes slid over me like rain down a window, the exact same way they drifted over Halil, Andrews, Compton, and the rest of the lads who happened to pass his line of sight as he turned to put the mugs away. I started for the door, feeling a shiver of cold...then realised it wasn't Bodie, but Haskell's warmth and presence I was missing. I stopped, turned back, looked at him. He was staring down into his mug like he was reading the leaves, fuckable mouth pursed. He seemed to feel my gaze and looked up straight into my eyes. I tipped my head towards the door.

After a moment, he smiled. He stood up with lazy grace, gathered my mug from the floor where I'd abandoned it, put them both back on the counter, and came to me. We fell into step, arms brushing as we angled side-by-side through the door.


End file.
